nst the Irish House of Commons, the Dean had a fit and
wrote no more verse. Here is a specimen of his _saeva indignatio_:

'Could I from the building's top
Hear the rattling thunder drop,
While the devil upon the roof
(If the devil be thunder-proof)
Should with poker fiery red
Crack the stones and melt the lead;
Drive them down on every skull,
While the den of thieves is full;
Quite destroy that harpies' nest,
How might then our isle be blest!'

It should be observed at the same time that even in his declining days,
when his heart was heavy with bitterness, Swift indulged in practical
jokes and in the most trivial pursuits. _Vive la bagatelle_ was his cry,
but it was the cry of a man who had as deep a contempt for the wiser
pursuits of life as for its frivolities. Of the mirth that is the
natural outcome of a cheerful nature, the Dean knew nothing. His
hilarity was but a vain attempt to escape from despair. In 1740 he
writes of being very miserable, extremely deaf, and full of pain.
Sometimes he gave way to furious bursts of temper, and for several years
before the end came, he fell into a state resembling idiocy. Swift died
on October 19th, 1745, leaving his money to a hospital for lunatics,

'And showed by one satiric touch
No nation needed it so much.'

A brilliant writer, who has undertaken to prove the 'glaring injustice'
of the popular estimate of Swift, and by his forcible epithets has
strengthened the grounds on which that estimate is built, observes that
Swift's 'philosophy of life is ignoble, base, and false,' that 'his
impious mockery extends even to the Deity,' and that 'a large portion of
his works exhibit, and in intense activity, all the worst attributes of
our nature--revenge, spite, malignity, uncleanness.'[47]

This harsh judgment is essentially a true one; but Swift's was a
many-sided character. He was a misanthrope, with deep, though very
limited affections, a man frugal to eccentricity, with a benevolence at
once active and extensive. His powerful intellect compels our
admiration, if not our sympathy. His irony, his genius for satire and
humour, his argumentative skill, his language, which is never wanting in
strength, and is as clear as the most pellucid of mountain
streams--these gifts are of so rare an order, that Swift's place in the
literary history of his age must be always one of high eminence.
Doubtless, as a master of style, he has be